Fern industry rebounding after '04 hurricanes

A year ago, Florida's fern industry was almost blown away by hurricanes.

These days, growers and industry experts say the picture is brighter. They credit government entities working together to provide aid with making the difference.

"After Hurricanes Francis and Charley last year, about 60 percent of the fern was wiped out," Edsel Reddin, Putnam County extension agent, said Friday.

The damage left growers reeling and there was talk the industry would not recover.

Growers and government officials weren't willing to give up that easily and a push began to get federal funding for the hard-hit industry, said Edsel.

The immediate program growers faced was that fern has never been considered a commodity and thus didn't qualify for hurricane damage funds.

Fern is the shorthand for the cut foliage industry, which these days is centered in the Volusia, Putnam and Lake county areas. About 7,692 acres are used by 293 growers, according to federal figures.

The hurricanes blew down the huge oaks, some more than 100 years old, that provided the shade necessary for the fern. The saran shade houses that provided man-made cover for the ferns were ripped to shreds.

Saran is the black tent-like material that shades fern. Federal officials counted the shade houses as a building and said those did not qualify for emergency funds either.

Most of the shade houses were little more than saran propped up by poles or set on a skeleton frame.

"(State Rep.) Joe Pickens, (U.S.) Congressman John Mica and the Putnam County Commission, especially Brad Purcell, really did everything they could to get that changed," said Reddin.

"The Cooperative Extension Service was also at work getting out into the fields and assessing the damage. It was a real team effort."

The Farm Service Agency, part of the United States Department of Agriculture, also stepped in to help.

"We ended up getting more than $3 million. Before they had never even acknowledged fern as qualifying for the program. We showed them it was a crop that had to be planted, fumigated, etc. It was just a crop growing under trees," said Kathleen DeFord, executive director for the USDA's Farm Service Agency in Putnam.

"The U.S. government came up with a special emergency program to handle the Florida hurricane situation.

The process was simplified so they could help these people immediately and they could get back in business," she said.

DeFord said it was a two-fold program, one part dealing with crop loss while the other part dealt with clean-up of the trees and other debris.

Grower J.R. Newbold says the program has helped. "We were in real dire straits. Now we're rebounding. If it wasn't for the disaster aid portion, we wouldn't be able to do it."

Reddin says in some ways the hurricanes in August and September had helped growers.

"The hurricanes meant the supply was down, but the demand stayed high. That meant the price went up and that helped the growers. The price has been depressed for some time."